Johann Chrysostom Magnenus

Background

Johann Chrysostom Magnenus was born around 1590 in Luxeuil-les-bains, Free County of Burgundy (now Franche-Comte, France). Little is known of Magnenus’ family and early life. His father was supposedly a nobleman.

Education

Johann Chrysostom Magnenus received a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Dôle.

Career

Johann Chrysostom Magnenus traveled for a period in Italy, becoming well-known as a doctor, and in 1946 was subsequently appointed a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pavia with a salary of 600 lire, where several years later he also secured the Chair of Philosophy. It is not known whether he practiced medicine while a professor. Apparently, he remained at the university for the rest of his life. In 1660 Magnenus was chosen a personal physician to the count of Fuensaldagne, the ambassador to the French court, whom he accompanied to Paris. This appears to have been a temporary appointment. Among his other patients were Octavianus Picenardus, President of the Senate from Milan, Cesari Monti, Archbishop of Milan, and Gaspare Alifero, another official. Apart from philosophical writings, his other works include De tabaco (1648), on medical usage and effects of tobacco, and De manna liber singularis (1648). He apparently prescribed tobacco syrup as a standard remedy for his patients.

Achievements

• Johann Chrysostom Magnenus' importance in the history of science derives from his attempt to reinstate the Democritean theory of atomism as a respectable part of seventeenth-century natural philosophy. His Demoncritus reviviscens (1646), though marking less of a break with tradition than Gassendi’s contemporaneous revival of Epicureanism, was typically regarded (for example, by Boyle) as instrumental in establishing a comprehensive alternative to Aristotelianism.

Works

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  • Democritus reviviscens 1646

Views

Magnenus adopted Democritus’ view that matter is composed of physically indivisible atoms which differ in size and shape for each element. He rejected the concept of materia prima, asserting that the elements are not interconvertible but preserve their atomic identity and properties when combined chemically.

Eight fundamental proposition for the existence of atoms were advanced by Magnenus, based on mathematical as well as chemical and other experimental considerations. Much of the experimental evidence was drawn from Daniel Sennert’s Hypomnemata physica (Frankfurt, 1636) and Jacques Gaffarel’s Curiositez inouyes (Paris, 1629), although he also cited the work of more prominent scientist of the period, including Galileo. Magnenus countered mathematical objections to the atomic theory by arguing that the continuum could not be built up from mathematical points, whether their number of finite, indeterminate, or infinite. Matter, he averred, consisted of atoms having definite dimensions (unlike mathematical points) which represent the physical limit to material division. There were three elementary atoms: fire, water, and earth. Each possessed specific properties and gave rise, by their various combinations, to all other natural substances. Air, because it had no characteristic properties but could assume, at different times, all primary properties, was not an element. It functioned as the neutral medium for propagating the specific properties of the elements during interaction and served to prevent a vacuum by filling the pores of compound bodies.

Magnenus’ restoration of Democritean atomism was limited, to be sure. Unlike Democritus, he denied the existence of a void; his retention of Aristotelian substantial forms (now inherent in individual atoms) and his explanation of combination by an innate tendency to union further separates his system from classical atomism. Moreover, while the widespread reading and citation of his work facilitated the acceptance of atomistic ideas in general, his theory must be distinguished from those corpuscular philosophies, like Gassendi’s and Boyle’s, which sought to explicate natural phenomena solely on the basis of the size, shape, and movement of imperceptible particles. Magnenus accepted certain of the tenets of seventeenth-century mechanical philosophy but amalgamated them into a broader system incorporating traditional modes of qualitative chemical explanation. Thus he is representative of that atomist school which, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, posed an alternative to strict mechanism in science.

Connections

There is no information on whether Johann Chrysostom Magnenus was married or had any children.

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography: Volumes 9 & 10
  1980